10 October 2018: World Mental Health Day – mindfulness and happiness

According to Counselling Psychologist and mindfulness expert Christos Papalekas, we make a number of unhelpful assumptions around the subject of happiness.

On World Mental Health Day 2018, let’s highlight some of these myths and consider an alternative, more mindful approach to mental health and wellbeing.

We tend to think that:

• happiness is ‘normal’ and mental suffering is not – so if we’re not happy, we’re defective in some way
• we should be able to control what we think and feel
• happiness and success go hand-in-hand
• we must get rid of negative feelings.

If you relate to these ideas, then like most of us, you’re influenced by conventional thinking here in the Western world.

From a mindfulness perspective, thoughts and feelings change all the time, as do circumstances. If we try to bend our lives so they match a particular fixed idea of what they should be, far from finding happiness, we’re much more likely to create misery.

What is mindfulness?

Getting rid of the tyrannical need to be happy is, paradoxically, a much better way of generating mental and emotional wellbeing. Here’s where mindfulness can help.

Mindfulness means paying attention to thoughts, feelings and experiences as they happen, in the present moment, without judgement. It’s a quality of consciousness characterised by acceptance of what is happening here and now.

Why does the mind find this difficult?

• We spend 70% of our time planning and organising our next step.
• We can process up to 70,000 thoughts in a 24-hour period.
• 80% of our thinking is repetitive.
• Worry is addictive.

So it takes a lot of practice to break these ingrained mental habits, but it can be done.

Mindfulness at work

During a busy working day, it can be particularly hard to be mindful. But there’s an increasing body of neuroscientific evidence which suggests that mindfulness affects the brain in ways that improve health, concentration, the ability to solve problems and manage interpersonal relationships. Far from being an esoteric fad, mindfulness training can really benefit business.

It’s not something that can be learned from a book. Training is partly theoretical, but has a strong emphasis on practical, experiential techniques. Try giving employees a taste of this important life skill and see how boosts performance.

If you want to introduce mindfulness or mental health first aid training into your workplace, please get in touch.

Christos Papalekas is one of a number of mental health practitioners from the Priory who joined us for an expert briefing on mental health at work back in June. Find out more.

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